The multi-billion-dollar drone industry -- with the help of the Congressional drone caucus -- is eager to sell its product to other corporations and entrepreneurs, and to local police departments. Strong lobbying pressure is being put on the FAA to speed up the licensing and regulatory process allowing drones of all sorts to crisscross our skies.

Let's not let ourselves be rushed into prematurely giving the go-ahead to this profit-driven push. Drone technology is evolving rapidly. But for the foreseeable future drones remain risky:

• On April 3, 2014 an RQ-7 Shadow drone operated by the Pennsylvania National Guard crashed at about 3:30 pm on a school day by an elementary schoolyard in Jonestown, Pa. Fortunately, there were no casualties.

• Since 2001, at least 49 large military drones (MQ9 Reapers, MQ1 Predators. RQ-4 Global Hawks) have crashed in the United States.

• On Nov. 12, 2013, an MQ9 Reaper drone piloted from Hancock Air Base mysteriously crashed into Lake Ontario. This July, after a months-long secret investigation, the Air Force reported that multiple navigation system malfunctions caused the crash. Fortunately that crash occurred over an uninhabited area.

• Formerly, Hancock was only allowed to fly its training Reapers over uninhabited areas. But in 2013 we learned that Hancock acquired federal permission to fly its Reapers over all of New York state north of the Thruway. Strangely enough, Reapers were also then allowed to dip south of the Thruway in just one small area: over the city of Syracuse. (See map, Aug. 6, 2013 Post-Standard.)

• Central New Yorkers need to ask ourselves: a) why are we being put at such risk, and b) why is Hancock running its drone training experiments over an urban area almost exclusively inhabited by civilians?

Haven't enough civilians been targeted overseas (in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere)? We know that the NSA has been running massive surveillance campaigns against U.S. citizens; now it seems that the powers-that-be are also bringing their drone hardware into the fray. At what point do we say, "NO"?

Ann Tiffany
On behalf of the Ground the Drones and End the Wars Committee
Syracuse Peace Council
Syracuse